Spencer-Churchill Connection
“Charles, the Third Earl of Sunderland, was described by John Evelyn as a 'youth of extraordinary hopes, very learned for his age'. Unfortunately, this precociousness was not best suited to politics, especially when married to a testy unforgiving disposition. After entering parliament in 1695 as a Whig member for Tiverton, he became under Queen Anne a special envoy to Vienna. He was briefly Foreign Secretary but his post owed much to his membership of the ruling junta and to the influence of his wife, Anne Churchill's mother, the Duchess of Marlborough, who was the Queen's confidante. When George I acceded, he continued in office as Secretary of State and Lord President of the Council, but shorn of real power never as deft a 'wheeler-dealer' as his father, the Third Earl inherited a love of collecting, though his passion was books, not pictures. By the time of his sudden death in 1722, he had built up an incomparable library although financial pressure at one stage forced him to mortgage it to the Duke of Marlborough in return for a loan. Ironically much of the collection eventually ended up at Blenheim.
“As the Great Duke had no male heir, the Third Earl's wife and her elder sister, Henrietta, were made co-heiresses by special dispensation. Her son, the Fourth Earl of Sunderland, died in 1729 without having married, and so her second son, Charles, became the Fifth Earl. When Henrietta, who had since become Duchess of Marlborough, died without issue, the Fifth Earl became the Third Duke of Marlborough. In 1734 the Fifth Earl left Althorp, and with him went the Sunderland title. His younger brother, the Hon. John Spencer, inherited the house. Greater fortune awaited him, however as the favourite grandson of Sarah Jennings, the dowager Duchess of Marlborough, he was bequeathed all her personal property. This included Holywell House, near St Albans, and a fine villa at Wimbledon, as well as substantial land. He did not live to enjoy it for long. He died in 1746, just two years after his 84-year-old grandmother, leaving his 12-year-old son, also John, to inherit.
“The Hon. John Spencer had a character partly shaped by ill-health. Flawed he may have been, but he used his wealth to become one of the leading artistic patrons of the era. He built the fabulous Spencer House overlooking Green Park, and also commissioned Reynolds for the family portraits which are now so valued.
“He added 5,000 mainly Elizabethan volumes to the library, and along with his wife, the forceful Georgiana Poyntz, cultivated an artistic circle of friends including David Garrick, the actor, Sir William Hamilton and Charles James Fox. In that other family field, politics, he was especially successful in electioneering. However, a provision of Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough's will was that he should not accept a court or parliamentary position himself but, in 1761, he was created Baron and Viscount Spencer, and four years later, John became the First Earl Spencer.
“George John, who became the Second Earl Spencer in 1783, appears to have been a mild-mannered, scholarly man, eclipsed socially by his over-bearing wife, Lady Lavinia Bingham, and no match for his sister Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, an inveterate socialite. Nonetheless, his separate achievements stand out. He was responsible for Holland's overhaul of Althorp, and inside, his bibliophilic obsession led to the creation of the greatest private library in the world. Among his eventual 40,000 or so books were over 3,000 incunabula, including 8 Caxtons, early French and Italian works, rare editions of England's greatest writers, including the first four Shakespeare folios, bibles and editions from Gutenburg. While his tastes were early encouraged by his tutor, William Jones, the Second Earl's enthusiasm for books was circumscribed for much of his life by his political career from 1794 to 1826 he was First Lord of the Admiralty under Pitt, having forsaken the family's traditional Whig allegiances. An able administrator, he suppressed mutiny in the ranks and oversaw Nelson's promotion to the Mediterranean fleet which presaged the great naval victories. Later on the Second Earl joined Pitt in his 'Ministry of all the talents'.”
http://www.althorp.com/SpencerFamily/pgeTheSpencers.aspx
26/8/2007
See http://www.althorp.com/images/familytree.pdf for the Spencer family tree